French, Dutch sides
to meet September 6
PHILIPSBURG--The Executive Councils of the French and Dutch sides of the island are scheduled to meet on September 6, President of the newly established Territorial Council of St. Martin Louis-Constant Fleming announced in an interview on 99.9 Choice FM, Wednesday.
It will be the first meeting between the two sides since the French side attained its new constitutional status, having graduated from being part of a commune to being a Collectivité d’Outre Mer (COM) with greater self-governing authority and responsibility.
Fleming said he had received a letter from the St. Maarten Executive Council on Tuesday agreeing that the two sides should meet on September 6.
He indicated that several issues dealing with cooperation between the two sides would be on the agenda for that meeting. One such issue will be the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed by Mayor Albert Fleming and Commissioner Sarah Wescot-Williams last year.
“We will update that and bring it more into reality. We are now going to be in a position where we are going to give the public not just lip service where cooperation is concerned, but we are going to do some real cooperation,” Fleming said in his interview with Eddie Williams.
He welcomed St. Maarten’s appointment of someone (Marcel Gumbs) as coordinator for relations with the French side. He said the appointment was “extremely good” and the French side most likely would appoint its own coordinator in time for the September 6 meeting.
He said it was extremely important that each side have someone specifically responsible for coordinating cooperation between the two sides, to make sure that real cooperation would take place, because usually each side got bogged down with “its own urgencies” and day-to-day operations, and nothing ever got done.
Fleming identified a proposal for the introduction of “a yearly car tax” on the French side from the beginning of January 2008 as one area of cooperation he would like to pursue.
“We want to implement a yearly car tax. That would be a point of cooperation because it would be identical. We will agree on the same tariff for both sides and agree not … to change the tariff without consulting each other. Those are the little points of real cooperation,” he explained.
And, contending that he had some ideas about how to pursue that particular issue, he added: “We have an idea of how we are going to go about it. We are going to put that on the table in terms of car registration, driver’s licence, insurance, inspection, and proof of domicile, because we are starting out on the French side with zero in terms of information. That is going to be our first data base. …
“That will be a source of revenue to permit us to eventually make loans and upgrade the whole road system.”
He said the two sides would have to explore ways of complementing each other.
“What’s going to happen in the future is that we are going to complement each other in certain areas. There are areas where, for instance, we feel we could push further. For instance, our hospital: We are going to push to bring it to the level of a regional hospital and build it up to a very high standard, because we feel that is an area where we have been setting a good pace.”
He said he didn’t see the French side building an international airport to compete with Princess Juliana International Airport and the French side definitely didn’t have a site that could accommodate a deep water harbour.
He noted, however, that he would like to see the Grand Case Airport upgraded to a regional airport, with the runway being lengthened by 300 metres and additional parking space being provided.
“It’s ridiculous that sometimes private aircraft have to be diverted to park in St. Kitts or St. Croix, when they could be parking in Grand Case” and contributing additional revenue and economic activity to the French side.
In the 30-minute programme, Fleming spoke about a wide range of other issues, including plans for upgrading sports facilities and turning them over to sports associations to be managed, and even more immediate plans such as fixing the road in front of the cemetery in Marigot, “which is in a very, very bad state and which should be done in the coming days.”
